by Natale Ghent
There was a creak outside the bedroom door and her hands flew instantly to the covers, jerking them violently up to her chin. “Who is it?” she whispered hoarsely. She listened for several minutes, kaleidoscopic images of John’s ghost spinning through her mind.
Silence. It was a false alarm.
The blankets rested heavily against her shoulder as she rolled over in bed to look at John’s guitar standing in its case in the corner next to the dresser. She wondered fleetingly if it was the guitar that he wanted, then convinced herself that it was. It would explain so much. They should have cremated it down to ashes along with his body. “I’ll stop playing it,” she said aloud as she watched the locust tree throw dancing patterns against her bedroom wall, the tree’s fingers tapping out a rhythm on the window like butterflies trapped in a jar. The codeine she had taken earlier was working its way through her veins, settling numbly at the base of her skull. It mingled with the undulating shadows in the room and began its slow, liquid dance.
She let her eyes go unfocused, the way she liked to do, and thought about John, reanimated on Michael’s computer. His image captured and held within the screen, the stuttering strobe of movement, the wail of his guitar, his voice crackling through the speakers from beyond the grave. From the place the disease had taken him. Dragging him by inches. Challenging the strength of the doctors’ clinical faith and the power of the medical trinity: Surgery, Chemotherapy, Radiotherapy. “Brain cancer.” Sarah forced herself to say the words.
A heavy shadow darkened the window, breaking the light from the street lamp and scattering the dancing branches on the wall. It’s him. Sarah shot up in bed. She thought she heard footsteps outside her room again. There was a rattle at the door. She turned, fumbled frantically for the switch on her lamp, the cord slipping through her fingers for several moments before her thumb could find it and too late. John stood in the doorway. “Oh, please …” Sarah wailed, ducking under the covers, her hands shaking, the sound of her own breath like a steam engine beneath the blankets until anger overcame her and she began screaming through her fists. “Just take it!”
When she finally surfaced from the shelter of the blankets, face stained with tears, the guitar was still in its usual place in the corner.
Rising from the bed like a sleepwalker, Sarah stood in front of the mirror. Who was that girl staring back at her? She hardly recognized herself with her hair hanging dull and lifeless around her thin face. Taking the scissors from her desk, she began chopping mechanically, the scissors softly whispering as the brown locks floated to the floor. They collected at her feet, and she knew at that moment that John’s ghost would never let up—ever. She would call Donna and tell her as much. Better yet, she’d tell her to her face.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DDonna was being extra nice. It made Sarah suspicious. She wouldn’t have thought anything of it, really, if Donna hadn’t asked about Michael. In a nice way, not with the usual snide tone. She seemed really interested, girlfriend to girlfriend, about how things were going.
Sarah was reticent. She didn’t trust Donna. And she didn’t trust Peter, either. Especially since he’d shown up at the Queen’s with the FEWD crowd, wearing the prescribed red-and-white-striped shirt. He hadn’t acknowledged her when they’d walked in but simply pretended she wasn’t there. She couldn’t care less. It would make things easier, really, if he just checked himself out of her life. He hadn’t spoken to her since their talk in the music room, since she’d quit band altogether. Sarah twirled her Marlboro between her fingers and looked up at Donna through the rough hem of her newly acquired bangs.
“Did you use garden shears?” Donna joked, then admitted that she liked the bangs, said they gave Sarah a sexier edge, like Angelina Jolie from Girl, Interrupted.
“What do you think of that?” Sarah asked, gesturing toward Peter with her cigarette.
Donna glanced over at Peter. “I guess he’s been friends with them for a while. He likes to drink,” she added.
Sarah shook her head, exhaling smoke in forceful disapproval. “Who am I to judge?” She said this out of formality. The truth was, she felt fully qualified to judge. She didn’t like Peter one bit. He was so ordinary. She sipped her coffee, hoping Donna would swallow the platitude without question. A wave of nausea rose up to greet the pain behind her eyes and Sarah rattled her coffee cup to its saucer. “This crap tastes like motor oil,” she said, grabbing her purse and digging impatiently for the pair of codeine tablets she’d put there.
Donna produced her bottle of Advil and tossed it across the table. “Keep it,” she said.
Sarah’s hands shook as she rattled four pills from the bottle and washed them down with a swallow of coffee.
Donna looked at her with controlled concern. “You never did tell me what was wrong with you that day.”
“What day?”
Donna pointed at her nose. “The gusher.”
“Oh,” Sarah brushed it off with a wave. “Nothing. I’m better now,” she lied. “So is my nose.”
“Good,” Donna said. “‘cause you’ve been looking kind of worn out lately.”
Sarah scowled. If Donna had something to say, why didn’t she just come out and say it? “Of course I’m worn out,” she said, her temper flaring. “That stupid ritual totally backfired. I might as well just put a ‘Welcome’ sign above my door.”
“You saw John again?”
“Yeah, I saw him.” Sarah stubbed her cigarette violently into the ashtray. “It’s worse than ever.”
Donna leaned forward. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Sarah said with contrived nonchalance. “I told Michael. I guess I forgot to tell you.”
Donna’s face darkened. She picked up her Zippo and snapped it open and shut.
Sarah felt a sudden twinge of remorse. She was being mean. It wasn’t Donna’s fault the ritual hadn’t worked. She’d only been trying to help. She knew that Donna loved her. And she loved Donna, too. As for Peter, she had led him on that night because she was mad at Michael. Or confused. Yes, that’s what she had been. Confused. She decided to lighten up, to stop being so serious and just resign herself to having a good time. She adopted a pleasant tone in her voice. “What were you trying to tell me earlier, before Peter showed up?”
Donna looked at her guardedly then visibly relaxed. “I’m getting a tattoo,” she said.
“What and where?” Sarah asked, opening a new pack of cigarettes and offering the first to Donna.
Donna accepted the cigarette, lighting it with a quick snap of the Zippo. She blew smoke through pursed lips and raised her eyebrows the way she liked to do. She spoke in an Irish brogue. “Well … I thought of getting one of those little fighting leprechauns, you know, the ones with their fists in the air … for obvious reasons.”
“… because you wish you were Irish … and you like to fight …”
Donna pointed her cigarette at Sarah in validation. “Yeah. Then I thought about a shamrock.”
“… for luck …”
Donna pointed at her again. “… and because you wish you were Irish …” “And then I thought about getting one of those ladies, you know, like Betty Boop or something, tattooed around my navel so I could make it dance and freak out little kids.”
Sarah burst out laughing. She had forgotten that she had told Donna the story of her childhood “trauma” with the biker at the Gorge. Its high cliffs and trees were a perfect backdrop for pot smoking and lovemaking, the beach reserved for more open activities: children playing in ill-fitting bathing suits, parents reclining on elbows, squinting from sand-covered blankets; the mossy smell of water, damp towels, wet dogs. Mostly the bikers kept to themselves, but sometimes, paths crossed, like at the concession stand. She had stood waiting for her order, balanced on one leg like a flamingo, rubbing the sandy sole of her foot up and down her shin. The coins were warm from the sun but cooler than her hand. There was the odour of oil and flour at the concession, the mingling sw
eet and acrid smell of ketchup and relish and vinegar. The light was glaring off the peeling white paint of the counter when the biker came, big, bearded, eclipsing the sun. She tried not to look at him, his belly bulging from a black leather vest, his arms decorated with a twisted rainbow of skulls and snakes and women’s fiendish faces. But she couldn’t look away as he turned to her, almost out of obligation it seemed, and began rolling his jiggling stomach in and out, like bread dough, the naked hula dancer at his navel shaking and rippling, ink breasts pointing up, then down, up, down. It made her feel so thin and hard and small …
“As long as you don’t get the Grim Reaper tattooed on your stomach and then run off and get pregnant,” Sarah said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know … that woman we met last year in the bar. The one with the weird tattoo on her stomach.”
“Oh my God, right!” Donna guffawed. “She was all tough, getting inked with the Reaper, and then her stomach stretched all out of shape and she had to have it transmogrified into something.”
“A dancing groundhog,” Sarah said.
“No, it was a beaver.”
“God, how macabre is that?” Sarah rolled the ashes from her cigarette, pushing them around the tray. “So what are you going to get?”
Donna took a long drag, speaking through the smoke in her affected brogue. “A beautiful little woodland sprite … on me ankle, don’t you know.”
Sarah nodded with approval. “I’m surprised. I would have thought a skull and crossbones. Doesn’t the ankle hurt the most?”
“Yes, and I don’t care. It’s worth it.” Donna eyed Sarah over the lip of her coffee cup. “Why don’t you come with me?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Come on.”
“I wouldn’t know what to get.”
“You don’t have to know. You can decide when we get there. They have stacks of books to look through.”
“It’s expensive,” Sarah said. “And isn’t it supposed to be dangerous?”
“It’s clean these days,” Donna insisted. “They take precautions.”
“Oh, well then,” Sarah said. “As long as they take precautions.”
“It’s an oak tree.” Sarah winced as she peeled back a corner of the neat white bandage covering the tattoo on her hip.
Michael inspected the raw skin. “It looks more like the burning bush right now.”
Sarah swatted at him, pressing the bandage back down. “You know what it’s like. Your arm must have been a mess after your tattoo.” She gave a little yelp of pain as she slipped her jeans back over her hips and zipped them up. She cinched her belt tight to hold her pants up, the tongue lolling out of the belt loop.
“The only thing I’m concerned about,” Michael said, “is that I won’t be able to manhandle you until your tattoo is healed.”
“Guess not.”
“I’m just going to have to resort to videos instead.”
“Guess so.”
“You don’t even care.”
“Guess not.”
Michael lunged for her, stopping short as his hand gripped her wrist. He seemed shocked by the frailty of it, almost as if he was afraid he would snap it like a twig. He released her and ran his hand gently through her hair. “I can still kiss you, can’t I? Or did that tattoo affect your lips as well?” He kissed her softly. “Why an oak tree?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Sarah answered, her eyes becoming glazed and distant. “I’ve been dreaming about it lately … a tree just like it. The dream is always the same. I’m walking through the woods. It’s dark. I can barely see my own hands in front of my face. But somehow, I know which way to go, like I’ve been there before, like it exists in my memory from childhood or something. And then I see it—the oak tree. It stands out from the rest of the trees in the woods, like it’s backlit, a bright light all around it. And it’s as if I can feel it, like somehow I’m part of the tree. It wants me to come closer …” Her words trailed off.
“Hey,” a voice said through the bedroom door. It was Michael’s father. “How are you doing today?”
Michael turned back to the computer, silent. Sarah waved half-heartedly. “Hey,” she said, clutching modestly at her shirt collar. She could feel his eyes examining her.
“You kids should get outside and get some fresh air. You’re starting to look wan.” He stood in the door for a moment longer, but thankfully disappeared.
Michael looked at Sarah. “So what happens?” he asked, as if his father had never been there.
Sarah sighed, pushing her hair behind her ears, her voice becoming flat and far away. “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. I just stand there and look at it. And then I wake up. It’s the same every time.”
He put his arms around her and kissed her face, brushing several loose strands of hair from her eyes. “I love your bangs.”
“Why do you hate your mother?” she abruptly asked, pulling away from him.
Michael looked at her in momentary shock. “I don’t hate her. I just don’t respect her.”
Sarah sighed. Wasn’t that his way, to split hairs, to argue over the details? “Okay, why don’t you respect her?”
“She was weak,” he said, moving over to the computer and bringing John’s file up. “She had no backbone. She couldn’t stand up to the smallest challenge.” He clicked the screen, made John’s guitar shiver with motion. “Something happened between them at some point. I don’t know what. But she wouldn’t let him touch her any more—she couldn’t stand the idea of his hands on her, hands that handled sickness and death. And then she left. He tried to kill himself,” he confessed.
“Why?” Sarah gasped.
Michael shook his head. “I’m not sure. I think it was the weight of it, the burden of so much hopelessness. I think one of his patients had asked him for an assisted suicide and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t face it. I don’t know if he was thinking about killing himself, really, or just thinking about what it would be like to face death for real, the way his patients do every day.”
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said, ashamed that she had pushed the issue. “I guess we all have our skeletons in the closet.”
“Some more than others.”
She stared at him sympathetically, the question burning in her mouth. “How do you know he tried to kill himself?”
His hand stopped working the mouse as he sat back contemplatively in his chair. “I found him one night, sitting in his room. I surprised him. I wasn’t supposed to be home but I skipped that day. He had the gun beside him, on the bed. I knew when I saw him what he was thinking before I even noticed the gun—just by the way he looked at me. I could tell he’d crossed some line in his mind.”
“God.” It was all Sarah could think to say. Her family was crazy, that was for sure, but no one had ever thought about killing themselves—at least not to her knowledge, not openly. Her mother’s willing disappearance from society, her spirit dissipating like rings of smoke in the air, that was a suicide of sorts, she thought. But nothing like blowing your brains out in your bedroom. That was so final, so desperate. Her father … well, maybe he had thought about it some night while driving alone in the middle of nowhere, along some lonely ribbon of road, the dark pressing in on him. Maybe. But he’d thrived on uncertainty, she knew that. As long as he had a tank full of gas and a glass of scotch he could be hopeful.
And then a memory of John imposed itself. Hadn’t he asked her to do it? Hadn’t he asked her to find a way? Poison would be his best friend in his hour of need, he’d said. It would allow him to die with dignity. It would provide him with choice. Promising to find a way, Sarah had begun researching Hemlock societies and combing through ancient herbal tomes for an appropriate agent. It was in a book called Gerard’s Herbal that she’d met belladonna, the plant known as deadly nightshade, or Atropa. Called the enchantress, the devil’s herb, the most pernicious of the three fates, her toxic berries were said to cause madness in small
doses, and in larger quantities “bring present death.”
But John had abandoned the idea late in the game and never mentioned it again. Sarah thought he’d gotten cold feet, that he’d given up on the idea when the stark reality of death became too certain to face directly. She’d been secretly relieved by his silence over the issue. It let her off the hook; she wouldn’t have to face the horror of it. And then she’d made it her reality, trying to understand what it would be like to be him. To know that death was just behind the door and that that door would inevitably open. Every motion, every gesture, tinged with the knowledge of death’s approach. I’m brushing my teeth; I’m dying. I’m tying my shoes; I’m dying. I’m combing my hair; I’m dying. It wasn’t until much later that she learned of how he had asked the doctor to do it, the doctor flatly refusing, saying it went against his Hippocratic Oath. Maybe that’s why he’s haunting you, she thought. Because he knew deep down that she didn’t have the guts to end his pain—that she had gone through the motions but never really intended to help him at all …
Sarah yanked her mind back to Michael. It was much easier to think about someone else’s problems. To be abandoned twice … what would that be like? First his real mother, then his adoptive mother. And then his father on the bed with a gun. It was so … screwed up. “I’m sorry,” she said again. Then thought it was necessary to say more. “How did you handle that?”
